Roles of Alloy Composition and Grain Refinement on Hot Tearing Susceptibility of 7××× Aluminum Alloys

During the production of high-strength 7××× aluminum alloys, hot tearing has set up serious obstacles for attaining a sound billet/slab. In this research, some typical 7××× alloys were studied using constrained rod casting together with the measurement of thermal contraction and load development in the freezing range, aiming at investigating their hot tearing susceptibility. The results showed that the hot tearing susceptibility of an alloy depends not only on the thermal contraction in freezing range, which can decide the accumulated thermal strain during solidification, but also on the amount of nonequilibrium eutectics, which can effectively accommodate the thermally induced deformation. Our investigations reveal that Zn content has very profound effect on hot tearing susceptibility. The Zn/Mg ratio of the alloys also plays a remarkable role though it is not as pronounced as Zn content. The effect of Zn/Mg ratio is mainly associated with the amount of nonequilibrium eutectics. Grain refinement will considerably reduce the hot tearing susceptibility. However, excessive addition of grain refiner may promote hot tearing susceptibility of semi-solid alloy due to deteriorated permeability which is very likely to be caused by the heavy grain refinement and the formation of more intermetallic phases.